“Slaughter Solution”: Can you smell the Constitution burning?

If not, you better get your nose checked because, as Doug Ross notes here, the “Slaughter Solution” is in play this week for a Democrat party in Washington, DC that is so hellbent on passing some form of healthcare “reform” by the end of the week that they’re willing to blatantly violate the Constitution in order to do so (much more so than it has already been violated over the past several decades, I should add).

What is the Slaughter Solution? Director of Stanford Law School Constitutional Law Center (where he is also a professor) and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute Michael McConnell explains:

Democratic congressional leaders have floated a plan to enact health-care reform by a procedure dubbed “the Slaughter solution.” It is named not for the political carnage that it might inflict on their members, but for Rep. Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.), chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, who proposed it. Under her proposal, Democrats would pass a rule that deems the Senate’s health-care bill to have passed the House, without the House actually voting on the bill. This would enable Congress to vote on legislation that fixes flaws in the Senate health-care bill without facing a Senate filibuster, and without requiring House members to vote in favor of a Senate bill that is now politically toxic.

The Slaughter solution cannot be squared with Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution.

Senate rules protect against majoritarian overreach by allowing a determined minority to filibuster most types of legislation. The majority needs 60 votes to override a filibuster. One exception, adopted in 1974, is legislation that makes adjustments to spending or revenues to reconcile current law to a budget resolution that has passed Congress. These are called reconciliation bills, and they require only a majority vote.

[…]

That is where reconciliation fits in. If the House passes the Senate bill and the president then signs it into law, reconciliation would permit Congress to pass new legislation making changes to that law. Reconciliation might not solve the abortion coverage problem or other nonbudgetary issues, but it would allow Democrats to correct most of the Senate bill’s offensive features.

The rub is that, according to the Senate parliamentarian, reconciliation is permitted only for bills that amend existing law, not for amendments to bills that have yet to be enacted. This means that, for the Senate to be able to avoid a filibuster, House Democrats first have to vote for the identical bill that passed the Senate last Christmas Eve. That means voting aye on the special deals, aye on abortion coverage, and aye on high taxes on expensive health-insurance plans. Challengers are salivating at the prospect of running against incumbents who vote for these provisions.

Enter the Slaughter solution. It may be clever, but it is not constitutional. To become law—hence eligible for amendment via reconciliation—the Senate health-care bill must actually be signed into law. The Constitution speaks directly to how that is done. According to Article I, Section 7, in order for a “Bill” to “become a Law,” it “shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate” and be “presented to the President of the United States” for signature or veto. Unless a bill actually has “passed” both Houses, it cannot be presented to the president and cannot become a law.

[…]

The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote. The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form. As the Supreme Court wrote in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), a bill containing the “exact text” must be approved by one house; the other house must approve “precisely the same text.”

And the WH response when asked about the Slaughter Solution? Well, of course it’s to lie through their teeth about it, Robert Fibbs style.

So much for the phony campaign promises by ObamaCo. about “returning the United States to the rule of law” or however he worded the bogus “pledge” prior to being elected in November 2008. This WH – and the party it represents – gives entirely new meanings to the word “transparency,” none of them being good.

Oh – and what has the “newspaper of record” written about this brazen disregard for the Constitution? To date: absolutely nothing. Same same for the WaPo.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the water-carrying for the Obama adminstration and the Democratic party agenda by the “leading” (liberal) newspapers around the country continues on what is arguably the most contentious domestic bill/issue to hit this country in over 40 years. Not surprising, of course, but worth mentioning all the same.

9 Responses to "“Slaughter Solution”: Can you smell the Constitution burning?"

A few days ago, I posted audio of Mark Levin calling for Slaughter to be expelled from the House for violating her oath of office. I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance it would happen, but I want the Republicans to make the motion to bring this front and center before the public. It isn’t just unconstitutional, it’s anti-constitutional and lays bare the anti-democratic impulses in the Democratic* Party.

*(Add irony to taste.)

Also, Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-MN) has said flat-out that, if this bill is “passed” under the Slaughter rule, the people are under no obligation to obey it. Ed at Hot Air has video of Michelle’s barn-burner of a speech.

It isn’t just unconstitutional, it’s anti-constitutional and lays bare the anti-democratic impulses in the Democratic* Party.

Dems who freely use the pejorative “teabagger” get itchy and shaky when right-wing pundits say “Democrat Party” rather than “Democratic Party.” As I explain in this post on Mediaite.com (I’ve been since banned), there is nothing democratic about the DNC’s Presidential primary process with its “superdelegates” whose votes potentially negate thousands of individuals’ ballots at a time.

The closer you examine the Dems’ actions, you more you realize they are elitist and anti-democratic. For those who hit the snooze when the tea party movement sounded the alarm, this should wake up some more people.

I don’t think that it matters what method the Democratic Party chooses to force THEIR health care bill on the citizens of the U.S. whom a majority say they don’t want THEIR bill. Once they “pass” it then it no doubt will go to the Supreme Court for the many violations of the Constitution in “passing” it and for the many violations of the Constitution for the things contained inside the bill. In then end, it not only hastens the demise of the Democratic Party and of the bill itself.

America is not a socialist/communist oriented nation. It is an individualistic/freedom oriented nation.

“Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.” – Vladimir Lenin

Only a complete fool thinks this health care debate is about helping the uninsured. This is about control. The more people rely on the government, the easier it is for the government to control the people. There is absolutely no reason why EVERYONE’S health care has to be changed if this is about helping the 31 million who do not have health insurance.

No reason at all. So, if your goal is a socialist society, why would things like the Constitution stop you?!

Where are the cries from the left about “shredding the Constitution” that we heard all during the Bush administration?

What, now that we have someone in the White House that really wants to shred it (per his comments on its faults during the campaign) they fall silent?

One could conclude that they either don’t actually care what the Constitution says and were only trying to sound as if they had a point to make, or that they have no idea what they were talking about. Or maybe it’s a little of both – the leaders as the former, and the sheep-like masses as the latter.

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Hey, Socialism for everyone! Down with Democracy, the free market economy, individual libery! Those ideals are not only passe, they are discriminatory, keep the poor, ‘downtrodden’, uneducated (and often unmotivated to bring themselves out of their circumstances) and the rest of the world which this cruel, evil, greedy, capitolistic nation has harmed and sought to destroy. This is not only about the completion of the Dem’s redistribution of wealth agenda and Obama’s personal legacy of sticking it to those who deserve it for their greedy capitolistic ways. Good luck getting all of those poor, downtrodden ones to employ those of us stuck with the bills.

Blood boiling here….if this method of passage is so clearly unconstitutional and if it goes to the Supreme Court who deems it so and therefore will negate it….shouldn’t all those who voted/passed it or however they push it to the President’s desk, all be impeached for not upholding the constitution? Including the President for not determining so and keeping his oath of office to uphold, preserve and protect the constitution?

On the whole of it I am disgusted…we need more than a tea party to rid our country of these power hungry vermin!